RESEARCH ON HUMAN EMBRYOS PROPOSED

A federal panel is proposing that scientists be allowed to create human embryos in the test tube for research, a scientific journal reports today. The embryos would later be destroyed.

Today's edition of Science magazine reports that an advisory panel of the National Institutes of Health will recommend that the federal government provide funding for experimentation on laboratory-created embryos only for "compelling" research.

The embryos, from donated eggs and sperm, would be destroyed no later than 14 days after fertilization. During that period in a normal pregnancy, a fertilized egg is still dividing and has not yet implanted on the womb.

The knowledge gained would have to be used for "baseline" scientific information, says Science, a weekly news and research journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The nature of that information was not specified, but presumably would not be attainable by other means.

"This opens a new door," said Robert M. Greenstein, director of human genetics at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. "Up until this point, the only thing that has been open to research has been the obtaining of fetal tissue" that is a byproduct of a natural or induced abortion.

Greenstein said such research could yield important knowledge about the molecular genetics underlying disease and cannot always be obtained from animal subjects. The secrets of cell division and the movement of newly created cells into different groups with specialized functions may hold clues about cancer and other diseases.

The National Institutes of Health declined to discuss the proposed rules of experimentation, which it said it had intended to make public Sept. 27.

Those rules, the first governing the use of human embryos in research, would end a two-decades- old moratorium on federal funding for such studies. The guidelines affect only federally supported research, but carry weight for other researchers seeking an ethical consensus for their work.

They address a range of experiments that scientists may have the technical capability of performing, but which raise profound ethical and moral questions.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, predicted a "maelstrom of critical reaction" to the recommendation that will lead to Congress becoming involved.

Devised by the Human Embryo Research Panel, assembled last January by Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health, the proposed rules are also noteworthy for the research they would not endorse.

The panel said further consideration should be given to any proposal to harvest eggs from aborted female fetuses. Still, such eggs would be envisioned for lab use only.

A Scottish scientist caused a furor last winter when he suggested a more far-reaching use of fetal ovaries: transplanting them into infertile women incapable of making eggs of their own. A woman's lifetime supply of eggs are formed when she is in the womb. Eggs begin to mature at puberty.

Also deemed as not acceptable were other activities, some technologically feasible now, others not.

Those include the implantation of human embryos in animals for gestation; any research conducted beyond the 18th day after a test-tube fertilization; sex selection of embryos, except selection instigated in pursuit of an understanding into diseases, such as Down's syndrome, that are related to the sex- linked X chromosome.

Also banned were investigations into new organisms, called "chimeras," created by melding genetic material from the embryonic cells of two humans or from a human and an animal. A chimera was a creature in Greek mythology possessing the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent.

And no research could be done unless the resulting embryo came from an egg and sperm donated by individuals who have consented to the research.

Caplan said he opposes the creation of research embryos except as a last resort. He would prefer turning first to unused embryos already being culled at fertility clinics.

The proposed rules would allow research on unused embryos up to the 14th day after fertilization.

Caplan predicted public reaction will fall into two camps.

The idea "will not wash with a large segment of American society," who Caplan characterized as agreeing that an embryo is not a person but finding the creation of an embryo for research as an affront on "respect and dignity shown toward human life."

Another group will see any research on embryos or fetal tissue as "the immoral manipulation of a person."

The Science article quotes Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, as saying there can be no "legitimacy of nontherapeutic experimentation on live embryos."

Doerflinger, quoted during an address he made during a panel hearing in June, said there is "nothing in existing law or legal precedent that says the embryo outside the womb deserves less protection" than the unborn fetus.

Greenstein said what the panel is doing, "depending on your point of view, is gradually extending the boundaries in which to examine an expanding series of research questions."

Despite his misgivings, Caplan acknowledged the need could arise for research on an embryo requiring a specific genetic makeup or defect contained in a donated egg or sperm.

Robert J. Levine, chairman of the human investigations committee at Yale University School of Medicine, disputed this is the first time a federal body has issued guidelines allowing funding for the creation of a research embryo.

Such a panel was disbanded in 1980 by the Carter administration, creating a vacuum, Levine said, that went unfilled during the 12-year- long Reagan and Bush presidencies.